06 January 2008
While stressing that there is a 'pervasive sense of fear' among the thousands displaced by the ongoing war between the Sri Lanka army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, a top UN official has urged parties concerned to find peaceful solutions and prevent fresh displacement of people.
“The predominant concern among internally displaced persons (IDPs) is physical security,” Walter Kalin, the UN secretary general's representative on human rights of IDPs, said last Thursday in his report following a visit to war-affected parts of northeast Sri Lanka.
Mr. Kalin said the refugees, whose officially registered numbers in the island had swelled to 300,000 since 1980, feared continued violence.
There have also been abductions, lootings and attacks on individuals by the Tamil Makkal Vidhuthalai Puligal, a group led by a small group of renegades that had broken away from the LTTE in 2004 and has been operating in the eastern districts of Batticaloa and Amparai with the backing of the Sri Lankan armed forces.
Incomplete mine clearance, round ups by Sri Lankan security forces and detention of people without notification to their families about the reason and the place of imprisonment are some of the major concerns of the refugees.
Kalin felt that the government has made 'considerable efforts' to assist the displaced after the tsunami of December 2004.
But Sri Lanka's recovery from the devastating tsunami of December 2004 has been uneven and other UN officials said the Northeast had not benefited.
And it was the northeast, which took the brunt of the killer waves on Boxing Day, which destroyed about 1,21,000 houses and killed over 30,000 in the island.
Thousands of families in the war-ravaged north and east are still living in basic, temporary shelters with palm-frond roofs and corrugated metal sheet sides, their numbers swollen by others displaced by the war.
The ever-deepening civil war between the Sri Lankan state and Tamil Tigers has hamstrung rebuilding work in the east and halted it in parts of the LTTE-held north, where materials such as cement and steel rods have dried up because of a government ban.
"Three years after the tsunami nearly 100,000 families, or around 80 percent of those affected by the disaster, are back living in totally new or repaired houses," said David Evans, chief technical adviser for UN Habitat in Sri Lanka.
"But the conflict has badly hampered or brought reconstruction work to a standstill in some parts of the north and east and another 21,000 houses are still required," he added.
"So a big task still lies ahead in 2008 and progress in parts of the north will be impossible until the fighting stops."
In southern Sri Lanka, away from near-daily artillery duels and land and sea battles, it's a different story.
Unhindered by the war that is focused in the north, legions of donors were able to put up housing schemes and fund many self-build projects via grants, though still slowed by red tape and difficulties securing land to build on.
However, without differentiating the ethnic differences, Mr. Kalin reported that over 200,000 displaced people had returned to their homes or had been provided with temporary shelters and were beginning to regain their livelihoods.
He said he was encouraged by the government's recognition of the need to attend to the problems of Muslim refugees from the northern Tamil-speaking district of Jaffna.
Several thousand Muslims were driven out by the Tamil Tigers and have been living in refugee camps in Puttalam, north of Colombo, for the past 17 years.
Looking at the future, Kalin urged the Sri Lankan government to take measures in line with international human rights standards and the UN guiding principles on internal displacement in the areas of security, livelihoods and access to humanitarian help.
This was essential if the return of the refugees to their homes was to be sustainable both in the near and the long term, he said.
He emphasized the need for providing safe exit routes for refugees during military operations.
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